Al Gore will visit Los Angeles this week to praise the city’s move away from coal-fired power plants, including the Navajo Generating Station near Page, where the Salt River Project is doubling its stake.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared “the era of coal is over” Tuesday shortly after the board of directors for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power voted to negotiate with SRP regarding final terms of the sale.

SRP has been negotiating with the LADWP to purchase the utility’s 21 percent stake in the embattled power plant, which has six owners and faces costly upgrades required by the Environmental Protection Agency.

LADWP and other California utilities are bound by a 2006 law that limits their investments in power plants that don’t meet a certain threshold for emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas primarily responsible for climate change. Coal-fired plants have the highest CO2 emissions, and that gas can’t be captured by filters or other equipment the way other pollutants can be mitigated.

“Mayor Villaraigosa's decision to end Los Angeles’ reliance on dirty coal and guide the city to a more sustainable future is a bold step on the path towards solving the climate crisis,” former Vice President Gore said in prepared statement. Gore is chairman of the Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit organization that is involved in education and advocacy campaigns related to climate change. “This courageous action should serve as an example to leaders all across our country. We have the tools at hand. It’s time to act.”

The law requires LADWP to exit the Navajo plant by 2019, but utility officials have accelerated that time line to Dec. 31, 2015, saying Tuesday that they can get more value for their stake in the plant by disposing of it sooner.

Once a deal is reached, the directors at both utilities will have to approve the terms, as will the Los Angeles City Council. LADWP officials said Tuesday they hoped to bring that proposal to the council by fall.

SRP officials have been reluctant to discuss the negotiations, how much it will cost the utility, and what the effect could be on customer bills. As a nonprofit, municipal utility, all of SRP’s costs are paid by its nearly 1 million customers in metro Phoenix.

“While there has been good progress made, there are still many substantial and material issues still to be discussed and no guarantee that the negotiations will be finalized,” SRP spokesman Scott Harelson said Tuesday after the LADWP vote.

Arizona Public Service Co. announced a similar deal in 2010 with a large coal plant it operates in New Mexico, the Four Corners Power Plant. APS agreed to pay $294 million to buy Southern California Edison’s share of the plant.

If SRP pays a similar price per megawatt for LADWP’s portion of the Navajo plant, it would be worth about $189 million.

“The SRP teams involved will do the best to get the most economic deal possible, even compared to other recent deals that have been announced,” Harelson said.

The California law limiting investments in coal plants also plays a role in the pricing, limiting the value to LADWP over time.

“(Navajo) will be able to be run as a reliable baseload unit between now and 2019 and the energy produced will have an economic value, and thus the LADWP share ... also has economic value,” Harelson said. “The California law regarding LADWP exiting from coal facilities by 2019 in general would be something you could expect that would be considered as a factor in valuation.”

SRP already owns a 21.7 percent stake in the three generators at the plant. Buying the LADWP share would give it a 42.9 percent stake. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation owns 24.3 percent of the plant, using that electricity to pump Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson through the Central Arizona Project. APS, NV Energy and Tucson Electric Power all have smaller shares of the plant.

In January, the EPA proposed reducing emissions from the plant that contribute to regional haze. The upgrades could cost $600 million to $1.1 billion, SRP officials now estimate. By doubling its stake in the power plant, SRP would also double its share of those upgrade costs.

SRP officials dispute the EPA findings and how much the power plant’s emissions contribute to haze.

The 21 percent stake that LADWP owns in Navajo is equivalent to 447 megawatts of power capacity, when the plant is running at full capacity. One megawatt is enough power for about 250 Arizona homes at once.

LADWP gets 39 percent of its electricity from coal power at Navajo and the Intermountain Power Project in Utah.

LADWP also moved ahead Tuesday with plans to convert the Intermountain plant to natural-gas, though those plans also must be approved by all 36 utilities that purchase its power.

LADWP has in place plans to replace its coal power with energy efficiency projects; renewable energy such as solar and wind; and natural-gas fired power plants to meet electricity demand when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing, said LADWP power engineering manager Eric Tharp.

“Natural gas will be used to firm and shape the renewable power we are receiving,” he said, adding that solar power only works about one-third of the day when sun is shining, and California winds are strongest from about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

“Since you can’t call someone and say turn the wind on or turn the sun on, we need something, hydropower, natural gas, nuclear or something to be able to meet all demand throughout the 24-hour day,” he said.

He said that selling the stake in Navajo to SRP ahead of schedule benefits LADWP customers.

“Every year we wait, the value of NGS decreases,” he said.

Fred Pickel, ratepayer advocate for the city of Los Angeles, said the city’s deals to end coal power use are commendable, though he cautioned that the utility needs to ensure they are not too expensive for that utility’s customers.

“You can convince the world this can be done economically,” Pickel said. “You can get other leaders to adopt this if we show we can do it economically.”

He said, however, that the move will largely be symbolic on a global stage regarding actually reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. Los Angeles’ coal use only represents about 0.04 percent of total global carbon-dioxide emissions.

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